


Maybe

by coffeerepublic



Series: wherever you're going, i'm going your way. [6]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Cuddling, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Pregnancy, References to Birth, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy, much angst, much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5672542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeerepublic/pseuds/coffeerepublic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nita would have sworn it was impossible. That was before she found herself pregnant in a day and age she had never wanted to bear a child into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a fill for the Fallout Kink Meme. Hence the breaks.
> 
> Enjoy! :)

The first time Nita noticed that something was off was when she and MacCready had been fighting a group of raiders a few days ago. They had been perched on a roof a ways away from the camp the wasteland bullies had set up inside an old quarry, sniper rifles in hand.

The two of them had had a contest going on for a while now – who would be able to one-shot-kill more enemies before being caught by the rest? She had lost track of the exact count a while ago, but nonetheless, it was a fun game.

She had dropped one enemy with a headshot and decided that it would be smarter to lie down rather than stay sitting up where she could easily be seen. While MacCready shot and killed two more raiders, she scrambled back a little and lay down on her front, close enough to the edge of the roof to keep shooting.

And suddenly, she was distracted by how weird her stomach felt. It was not painful, but a little uncomfortable. As if her body were telling her that she was not supposed to be doing this.

She ignored the feeling and concentrated on the matter at hand.

* * *

For the next few days, Nita tried her best to keep herself and her mind as busy as can be. They walked a lot, slept little and spent the rest of the time around campfires, talking, re-reading old comic books together and – once they got bored with that – re-discovering each other’s bodies time and time again.

When sleeping, she paid attention not to lie on her stomach. If she had, the weird sensation may have returned and she would have had to address its implications.

She did not want to think about it.

So she behaved as normally as she could, lest MacCready realize that there was something bothering her. There was no need to alarm him yet. Maybe there would never be a need to and this would turn out to be nothing.

There could be lots of causes after all.

Maybe she had eaten something funny. (But she had not eaten anything out of the ordinary.)

Maybe this was the beginning of a cold. (Was that even a possible symptom?)

Maybe her unhealthy lifestyle was finally catching up with her and she was simply gaining a little weight on her stomach and that was what made her feel weird. (Unlikely. If anything, she had lost weight due to eating too little too irregularly. These days, getting to eat involved more than just going to the Super-Duper Mart downtown.)

Or maybe, the thought she was still trying her hardest to push as far to the back of her mind as it would go would hold true. The thought that was telling her that she knew this exact feeling already.

It had been what had made her first realize that she was pregnant with Shaun.

* * *

Two weeks later, they arrived in Diamond City. It had been two weeks filled with near-existential dread on Nita’s part. Keeping her head busy had only been working for so long, and since then, a lot of her thought process had been focused on observing her own body.

She still hoped she was overreacting. Maybe she had simply become so paranoid that she now misinterpreted every slight physical anomaly. Maybe her paranoia, in turn, caused her body to behave in usual ways in the first place and it was all psychosomatic. Maybe.

MacCready seemed to have noticed that something was wrong, but he had never addressed the topic. Nita just tried to show him as much affection as she could despite the mental state she was in. She was scared he would think he had done something wrong when he was usually doing things as right as could be in regards to their relationship.

They had met one and a half years ago and been together for a little less than one year. That was such a short time, even if with everything that had happened, it felt like they had been through half a lifetime together. 

But it was definitely too early for something like this. And even if it were not, they had spoken about this kind of thing a while ago. They had very much been on the same page about it. Marriage did not have much significance beyond the symbolism anymore, they could do without one. Maybe they would reconsider that decision a few years from now.

But children? They both loved children – which was the exact reason they did not want to bring any into a world as fucked as this one was. Nita’s first pregnancy had been in the old times, before the nuclear fallout happened.

MacCready and his wife had been young, teenagers still, and had never known any better. When Lucy had become pregnant, it had been unplanned but not unwelcome. Now that he was older, he loved his son and would not take back any of his choices. But he also admitted he felt bad that Duncan had to be born into such an awful time and place.

‘Older’. The thought brought her out of her musings and made her chuckle. MacCready was still so, so young. Ten years younger than her, not counting the 200-odd years she had spent in cryostasis. It had made her a little uncomfortable at first – power imbalances and all. But the wasteland had forced him to grow up fast. He had seen more in two decades than many men did in their entire lives.

After entering the city, they headed straight for Dugout Inn and rented a room for the night. MacCready got to talking with Vadim and as soon as he had a beer in front of him, Nita excused herself to go to the marketplace. Thankfully, the fact that she had brought back the mutated fern one of the shopkeepers had requested gave her a good excuse to leave.

It was not really an excuse if she actually did what she had said she would, right? She dropped off the plant and restocked their supplies.

And then she stopped by Doctor Sun’s clinic to have herself examined.

Half an hour later, Nita stepped back out onto the market. She felt lightheaded.

This could not be true. It could not.

* * *

This was not a bad dream. This was real. Nita was actually, really, without a doubt pregnant.

When the doctor had revealed his diagnosis, she had not known whether to faint or start crying. Since neither seemed like an appropriate option, she had hastily thanked him, glad that she had had to pay up ahead, and run out of the clinic.

Now she was pacing around Takahashi’s noodle stand for the third or fourth time in a row. She was in over her head. She really was.

Nita knew that she had to return to Dugout Inn soon. If she did not, MacCready might become suspicious.

Shit. She had to tell him, did she not?

She felt as if a bucket of ice cold water had been dropped over her head. There was a sting in her chest at the thought of how he might react. They were so fucked. She was so fucked. How could she do this to him?

What she would not have given to have a strong drink or a cigarette or five right now. But that was obviously out of the question.

Despite still feeling like her world had fallen off its axis, she did her best to compose herself and walked back to the inn.

Inside, she saw her boyfriend still sitting at the bar. (The word ‘boyfriend’ made her feel like she was in high school again. But that was doubtlessly what he was.)

She set down the bag of food and medical supplies she had bought earlier on the floor and hugged him from behind, digging her nose into the leather of his coat. It was warm from his body heat, a comfort she could use at this point.

The response she got was a warm laugh from her favorite person. He did not need to turn around to know that it was her pressing against his back.

“Nita! You’re back!” He seemed a bit inebriated, not fully drunk yet however. He turned a little and reached out to wrap an arm around her and pulled her against his body in a side hug.

“Hey, Mac.” She pressed a kiss onto his cheek, prompting Vadim to laugh. The bartender seemed to have knocked back a few as well.

“You two are precious.” His accent apparently grew heavier with alcohol. “Care to join us two for a beer? I’ve got a new brew you haven’t tried yet, lady! You’ll love it!”

Shit. How was she supposed to act now? Declining a drink was entirely out of character for her. But she had to. She also had to get out of here. The cigarette smoke made her eyes water and she did not have to be any more irresponsible at this point.

“It’s fine, Vadim. I’m dead tired. I think I’ll just throw myself into bed. And you –” She turned back to MacCready whose arm was still around her in a lazy embrace. “– can join me anytime you like.” She punctuated her sentence with a peck to his mouth. Her reward was a happy little smile.

“I will. Don’t worry.” He did not let her leave without kissing her again, audience be damned.

After the door to room 2 – her standard room – had fallen shut behind her, she let out a breath she did not know she had been holding. She carelessly threw the supplies onto the pile in the corner where their backpacks and mobile sleeping necessities were already lying in a heap.

Nita undressed, crawled into the double bed and pulled the cover over her head. Pulling her knees to her chest, she squeezed her eyes closed, willing herself to fall asleep before she could start crying in earnest. Maybe if she fell asleep, this would go away. Maybe she would wake up tomorrow to realize this was all just a horrible nightmare.

She failed. Her mind was going a million miles a minute. Scared. Worried. The tears came, and she pressed a hand to her face, trying to suppress the sobs. At least he was not here to see her like this.

By the time MacCready joined her, she had run out of tears. Turned towards the window, she was almost glad he had stuck around the bar for so long.

She listened to him undress. The mattress dipped and he moved the covers so he could lie against her back without any barrier separating them. His arm wrapped around her, his breath hot on the back of her neck. He smelled a little of beer, but not intrusively so.

She covered his hand with her own. Noticing she was awake, he pressed a wet kiss to the nape of her neck.

Long after he had begun to snore softly, she could still not find it in her to fall asleep.

* * *

They had been on their way back to Sanctuary for two days now. It would probably take two more.

Nita knew she had to tell him. She had been postponing it this whole time, and as a result, the past 48 hours might as well have been twice that amount.

Wasn’t there some rule about not telling anybody until after the third month? That probably did not go for the father though, she assumed. And regretted that thought immediately. Father. The word made her even more anxious.

The old pit stop they had chosen to spend the night at was mostly intact. It had four walls at least, even if not all of those were whole anymore. Nita was sorting out supplies to plan what they would have for dinner tonight while MacCready was outside, starting a small fire to cook over. 

Maybe she would finally be able to muster up the courage to tell him. She would simply have to be an adult about it. She could not change things as they were now. And she would have to tell him eventually, preferably before she started showing. Another thought that made her want to cry again.

“Fire’s on. Do you know what you wanna eat yet?” There he was, standing in the doorframe. 

She felt a sudden sense of significance dawning on her. With the way he was standing there, his silhouette dark and framed by the light of the early sunset over the wasteland, she realized that this was serious. She wanted him to be by her side for as long as they lived. She had given a promise of forever once and it had been forcibly broken by the horrible circumstances. This was her second opportunity for a forever for herself. He was her chance to do better.

He was still waiting for an answer. She held up the food she had chosen and got up to join him.

“Sure. Let’s make dinner.”

She had to tell him. And she had to do so before her brain ended up short-circuiting because of the pressure.

After stepping out into the slowly cooling evening air, they got onto heating the food. Then, they ate in silence.

Nita knew she was the cause of the silence, but it seemed she had forgotten how to make conversation like a normal person. She had forgotten how to be her usual self. The thoughts racing through her mind became quicker and quicker, eventually turning into static. She dropped the empty food container to the ground and dug her face into her hands.

She could feel his eyes on her even before he spoke. 

“Nita?” He sounded so worried she wanted nothing more than to apologize. To apologize for worrying him, to apologize for how she had been acting, to apologize for what she was about to say to him.

“Nita, what’s wrong? Talk to me.” She shook her head, willing the tears in her eyes to subside so she could get this over with while retaining at least some remainder of dignity. 

It only barely helped that he had now sat down next to her, his hand on her back, softly stroking her skin through the fabric in an attempt to comfort her. He was such an amazing boyfriend. And what was she? Someone who did not deserve him.

“Robert.” Her voice cracked a little, but now she had to finish what she started. If he had not yet known that what she was going to say would be heavy, he did now. She never called him by his first name unless they were having sex. 

She kept her head down, staring at her hands instead of looking at him. Her eyes were unfocused. She could not bear to look at him now.

“You know that I love you, right?”

“I love you too. But you’re scaring me.” He never stopped caressing her back. “Is it why you’ve been kinda off lately?”

She nodded.

“Is it because of me? You know you’re supposed to tell me when I’m being an ass-… when I’m being a jerk.” This was one of the things Nita had been afraid of. Of course he would think he had done something wrong. Despite how much he tried to hide it, he was an insecure person.

“Oh God, no. You’re great. The best in fact.” She looked up at him for a short moment. “This is all on me. You may want to brace yourself, because I have something difficult to tell you.”

His hand stopped moving on her back and went to her shoulder instead.

“Can’t say I’m less worried now, Nita.”

She inhaled deeply and looked back down at the hands in her lap.

“Okay. Here it goes. So, I’ve been feeling weird for a little while now. Physically weird, I mean. And I got scared. That’s the real reason I wanted to go to Diamond City. I went to the doctor there. And turns out I was right.”

“Are you… ill?” The alarm in his voice was only going to get worse as the conversation went on, she was certain.

“I’m pregnant.”

There it was. She had said it. No way to take it back now.

The next second felt like a year. It seemed time had stopped. While the stress of having to tell him fell off her, the million fears she had been harboring shot back into her head with full force. Why didn’t he say something already so this uncertainty could finally end? She still did not have the courage to look at him.

Then he finally reacted. His grip on her shoulder tightened.

“Oh. Fuck.”

She was so surprised to hear him using the word that she unintentionally turned to him. He seemed shocked, to say the least. He must have seen the surprise in her eyes.

“If you know any better kind of situation for cursing, I’d like to hear it.” He did not seem angry, just a little… overrun.

“I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. I know we talked about this. I’m sorry.” There were so many things she wanted to say, it turned into a flood of words. “I… This is a horrible time. And we said we didn’t want any more children. Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

He interrupted her. “How long have you known?”

“Two days. Since Diamond City.”

“And before that? How long did you have the suspicion?”

“Like… two weeks, give or take.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He sounded hurt, and Nita immediately regretted all of her actions.

“I...” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t want to alarm you in case it would have turned out to be nothing. And I was scared of how you’d react.”

“Damn, Nita. You know me better than that. I don’t want you to have to go through things like that on your own. You should’ve told me! I would have had your back!”

“I’m sorry.” How many times had she apologized in a row now? No matter, she needed to. She had fucked up. “Please don’t think that I was afraid you’d leave me or something. I know you wouldn’t. I love you. I just… made myself so fucking paranoid. I’m sorry for not saying anything earlier.”

“Fuck, Nita.” The word was harsh, but his voice was not. He sounded exhausted.

She was not prepared to have him pull her into his lap, but when he did, she wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could. She dug her face into the side of his neck, praying she would not start crying again.

“I love you.” He whispered into her hair. “And we’ll manage this somehow.”

* * *

They sat in silence for a while. Nita was still clinging onto him as though he were the anchor grounding her in reality.

And he was. She was so relieved at the way he had reacted to her revelation. It was understandable that he was slightly upset at how she had kept this a secret from him until now. She would find a way to make it up to him, somehow.

A little later, MacCready spoke up. “Just before, you said that this was ‘all on you’.”

Wondering what he was going for, she lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him, settling into his lap a little more comfortably.

“Well, it kinda is. I’m the one who’s pregnant, remember?”

“But that’s bullsh-… nonsense. We both tried our best to be careful. Obviously it didn’t work. But that’s on me just as much as it’s on you.”

She rearranged herself again so they were face to face. In this position, Nita was about a head taller than him. Softly, she rested her forehead against his, letting her eyes fall shut.

“I… I realize that.” She swallowed. “It’s just, I was so convinced that this wasn’t a possibility at all. I was frozen for over two hundred years! That can’t be good for your reproductive system, can it? And ever since I got out of the vault, my periods have been anything from sparse to nonexistent. I just thought that it wasn’t even an option anymore. And I feel like I relied on that too much and that was stupid.”

(On that note, she was grateful that he was someone she could talk so openly with. God, did she love him a lot.)

She still had her eyes closed as he took her face into his hands and pressed a kiss to her lips. She responded in kind. He soon broke away again.

“Don’t call yourself stupid, Nita. You’re not.” She wanted to kiss him again, but it seemed he was not finished talking yet.

“How far along are you?” There was so much they had yet to discuss.

“About ten weeks.” She thought she saw something new in his eyes, but it was gone before she could define what it was. Excitement, maybe.

Next thing she knew, MacCready had reached down and pushed his hand under her shirt, resting his rather large hand on her stomach. Nita could not help but giggle – it tickled a bit in addition to how dorky he was behaving. It was endearing.

“Come on, all you’ll be able to feel there are old stretch marks.” Her self-deprecating humor was still intact. “It probably isn’t bigger than a cherry yet.”

He grinned at her. Her heart beat faster when she realized this was the first time he had smiled since she had told him. She had not even known what weight she had been carrying until the relief set in.

“How do you even know this stuff?” he asked, hand still underneath her shirt, fingers teasing the skin and making her giggle again.

“I’ve been pregnant before, you know,” she deadpanned. Knowing he was about to say something about having a child, too, she continued. “Back in the day. When literature was readily available. I must’ve read at least ten books on different aspects of pregnancy. Turns out my body still managed to surprise me, but I know a lot about it.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Just means we’re better prepared.”

Nita really had not expected him to be so positive about it as soon as he had gotten over the shock. She felt tears stinging at her eyes again, this time from happiness. (Had she always been such a crybaby? Maybe it was just due to her hormones acting up. Or maybe she was just overflowing with love for him today.)

“I don’t deserve you, you know that?” Before he could protest, which he was certainly planning to do, she pressed her lips to his in an open-mouthed kiss.

He quickly gave in and went along with it. She enjoyed the feeling of his beard against her skin as she was teasing his tongue with her own. Her hands were tightly grasping onto the lapel of his coat, his hands on her waist, one of them still underneath the fabric, one over it.

Slowly, she let the kiss die down into small pecks on his mouth before eventually breaking away. She did not want to, but she had to.

“There’s one more thing I need to tell you about if we’re gonna do this.”

Her voice had been serious enough to bring a look of fear back into MacCready’s eyes.

“What is it, Nita?”

She sighed very softly. She had managed to talk to him about the big news. Now she would have to give him some more unpleasant, but relevant information. With her major source of stress out of the way, it had moved up on the list of things that scared her.

Again, she did not want to have to look him in the eye when telling him. So she softly hugged his head to her upper chest and laid her own on top of his. It probably looked ridiculous, but that did not matter. It gave her a sense of intimacy.

“When I was pregnant with Shaun, everything seemed pretty fine at first. No complications during the whole nine months, next to no morning sickness, no other issues.” She breathed in the scent of his hair, forcing herself to go on. “But the birth was… complicated to say the least. He almost choked, so the doctors had to force things along. Which ended up being pretty horrible for me. It… was a very, very bloody affair. And there was a point when they weren’t sure I was going to survive.”

There it was. Out in the open. The entirety of what no one except for her late husband had ever known about the scariest moment in her life. And MacCready still had not said a thing, though his arms around her waist had tightened so much it was almost uncomfortable.

“It was probably just a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s very likely something like it is gonna happen again.” (What could she say? She had thought about this for ridiculous amounts of time.) “But it was one of the worst experiences of my life, and that includes all things peri- and post-vault. It’s not very rational, but I’m scared as hell.”

That was when she forced herself to stop speaking. She needed to give him the chance to process what she had just told him after all. Not moving from her position, she weaved her fingers into his hair to caress his scalp with her fingernails. Maybe it would calm him down.

“I…” he eventually started, voice raw and muffled by her skin. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Maybe she would never stop apologizing. “I know I’m pushing some heavy stuff onto you here.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry. I need to know these things. I’m just pretty overwhelmed.”

“And you have every right to be.” Her throat constricted. She was feeling so many things at once. Relief because she had told him all she had been keeping in. Sorrow because she had upset him. Worry because of the situation they would have to handle together. Her brain felt exhausted.

“Maybe it will all work out,” he said a few moments later, pushing her away until he was able to meet her eyes again. “No, wait, not maybe.” He gave her a short kiss. “It will work out.” Another kiss. “It. Will. Work. Out.” Each word was punctuated with another press of his lips to hers.

“Maybe it really will.”

“Not maybe.”

“Okay. Not maybe. It will.” She kissed him this time, lingering until she spoke softly against his lips. “It will.”

* * *

“So,” His voice still sounded rather solemn until he cleared his throat. “Wanna talk about the nicer things to do with having a baby?”

Hearing him phrase it this way made her see just how estranged she had been with her body ever since she had realized she might be pregnant. It stung to realize she had not even been truly thinking of it as a baby this far. She very obviously was not a good person. (Good people did not forget to consider the fetus growing inside them a baby just because they were scared, did they?)

“We’re having a baby.” She echoed, surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. And slowly, the knot of feelings inside her seemed to disentangle as a warmth spread in its stead.

“Indeed, we are.” MacCready smiled at her when he saw how wide her eyes had grown at the realization.

She smiled back. Nita could not pretend that everything was fine all of a sudden. There were still too many things that could go wrong, too many precautions to take, too many mistakes they could make. But for the moment, things were okay. They were okay.

“What nicer things did you want to talk about?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Names maybe?” He seemed to grow more excited the more they spoke about it.

She found herself wanting to hug him and never let him go. He was so precious.

“Isn’t it a little early for that, Mac?” She chuckled.

“You never know. We might have to spend a few months fighting about it before we can agree on one.”

“You’re a riot,” she retorted sarcastically, the smile never leaving her face.

“You know it, love.”

Nita leaned in and kissed the bridge of his nose. “I love you, you big, lovable dork.”

“Now aren’t you nice.”

“I mean it. And thank you for reacting the way you did. You’re amazing.”

“For you? Always. And I love you too. Don’t forget it.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I love MacCready's nose. Ridiculously much.]
> 
> Please do tell me what you think! ♥


End file.
